Fueling excitement was a new collaboration: The IMA preceded and then flowed into the interactive track of the SXSW festival on the 12th. Attendees at a Knight Foundation-supported array of SXSWi panels on news innovation and content strategy joined the mix.

So-called objectivity is a very expensive system to maintain." - Jay Rosen

Despite looming cuts and recent controversies, participants seemed eager both to learn about a raft of recent public media experiments and collaborations, and to meet their online friends and followers in the flesh. This annual public media conference, IMA, has recently been revitalized with new leadership and strategy, and felt much hipper and more cohesive than the last iteration of the conference in 2009.

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But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s a glimpse at the conversations through the eyes of attendees — noted in bold — and my own running Twitter coverage at @beyondbroadcast. You can follow a larger discussion of both conferences by going to the #imaconf and #sxsw hashtags on Twitter.

The run-up

Geez — pack for IMA or glue myself to the screen to track blowback on Schiller’s resignation? #pubmedia, I can’t keep up!

@rbole (Robert Bole, CPB): Getting in the shute: first #imaconf re: #pubmedia analytics, then #SXSW on open APIs and finally #mediafuturenow on digital journalism

@jacklerner: “#pubmedia can help local news by being a hub, a partner, or an innovator.” – @JLab @janjlab #SXSWlocal #sxsw

And onwards…

@CJERICSON: Video or audio of #imaconf coming soon. Audio this weekend. Video next week. For all attendees & members.

@g5member: Great to meet so many of public media’s creative and dedicated minds at #imaconf. Now, #sxsw time!

Full disclosure: In my role as the director of the Ford Foundation-funded Future of Public Media Project, I am working with the National Black Programing Consortium to incubate their Public Media Corps project via the Center for Social Media, and have also worked with PBS/NPR on the PubCamps and Association of Independents in Radio on a study of their MQ2 project. More details on all of these here: futureofpublicmedia.net.

CORRECTION: One of the tweets above has been corrected to reflect that it was blogger Latoya Peterson — not singer Latoya Jackson — who participated in the Public Media Corps judging panel for the next Top Public Media Model. Apologies!

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